A Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE SoC in 65 nm CMOS

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits 2011-04, Vol.46 (4), p.870-882
• Main Authors: Darabi, H, Chang, P, Jensen, H, Zolfaghari, A, Lettieri, P, Leete, J C, Mohammadi, B, Chiu, J, Qiang Li, Shr-Lung Chen, Zhimin Zhou, Vadipour, M, Chen, C, Yuyu Chang, Mirzaei, A, Yazdi, A, Nariman, M, Hadji-Abdolhamid, A, Ethan Chang, Zhao, B, Juan, K, Suri, P, Guan, C, Serrano, L, Leung, J, Shin, J, Kim, J, Tran, H, Kilcoyne, P, Vinh, H, Raith, E, Koscal, M, Hukkoo, Ajat, Hayek, C, Rakhshani, V, Wilcoxson, C, Rofougaran, M, Rofougaran, A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 8PSK; Applied sciences; Baseband; Battery; Cellular; Circuit properties; Circuits; CMOS; crystal oscillator; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Devices; Digital signal processing; direct conversion; direct modulation; EDGE; EDGE SoC; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; GMSK; GPRS; GSM; Integrated circuits; Integrated circuits by function (including memories and processors); low IF; Microwave circuits, microwave integrated circuits, microwave transmission lines, submillimeter wave circuits; Modulation; Noise; Oscillators, resonators, synthetizers; Phase locked loops; PLL; polar; Radio; Radio frequencies; Radio frequency; Receivers; Receivers & amplifiers; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; SoC; submicron CMOS; System-on-a-chip
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2011.2109432

A quad-band 2.5G SoC integrating all the RF, DSP, ARM, audio and other baseband processing functions into a single 65 nm CMOS die is described. The paper focuses on the radio portion mostly, and addresses the challenges of realizing a complete GSM/EDGE SoC with the RF integrated along with the rest of digital baseband circuitry. Several circuit level as well as architectural techniques are presented to realize a very low-cost and low-power 2.5G radio while meeting the stringent cellular requirements with wide margin. The radio draws a battery current of 49 mA in the receiver-mode, and 86/77 mA in the GMSK/8PSK transmit-mode. The low-IF receiver achieves a sensitivity of -110 dBm at the antenna, corresponding to a noise figure of 2.4 dB at the device input. The 8PSK±400 kHz modulation mask is - 64.1/62.7 dBc for high/low bands, with an RMS EVM of 2.45/1.95%. The radio core area is 3.95 mm 2 .